Divas (41 page)

But the flight was quiet, and as it turned out there was no one occupying the sleep capsule beside her. She was small enough to be able to curl up in it comfortably, and there was a little fixed
side table for drinks where the steward promptly placed a mimosa cocktail. Orange juice to hydrate you, cheap champagne to relax you. By the time the glass was cleared away as they got ready for
take-off, she had swallowed its contents, together with a sleeping pill, and was curled up in a nest of pillows. And as the plane levelled out, she extended her bed as the steward had shown her,
covered herself with her pashmina and then the airline blankets, strapped the seat belt over the entire bundle, and lay down to sleep, doing her absolute best not to think about what the next day
held.

They landed on time, at nine a.m. Italian time. Day flights were better for jet-lag, but the passport had come through yesterday at four in the afternoon, and they had
immediately made a booking on the first flight to Rome that she could possibly manage, paying with India’s credit card to avoid leaving any kind of electronic trail. The rest of the trip Lola
would pay with cash or traveller’s cheques, and the amount of both she was carrying was enough to send waves of panic through her every time she thought about it.

After the first-class passengers had left, she was the first off the plane. She’d have loved to be in first-class too, but it might have raised too many flags if Evie Lopez had been
travelling in that kind of style. Behind her, she could hear the fat woman in the kaftan wheezing as she wheeled her bag down the walkway. Nerves caught at her stomach, twisting it tight, as she
slid her passport underneath the small slot at the base of the perspex to the uniformed man sitting behind the counter. They were very careful in Italy, Lola noticed; in New York the passport
officials, stone-faced and imposing though they could be, didn’t feel the need to put a whole panel of clear perspex between them and the people they were intimidating.

The man was running her passport over a reader, checking something on his computer screen. His eyes lifted to hers, professional and cold, comparing her face to the one on the passport: blonde
hair, pulled back in the identical style to the passport photograph. Brown eyes. Small, pretty features. Even the silver earrings from the photograph. A match, surely.

Stay calm,
she told herself.
No one knows you’re here. No one could possibly have put a block on this passport. Stay calm.

And, sure enough, the man nodded, sliding the passport back to her through the gap at the bottom of the perspex, and his expression cracked into a distinctly non-professional smile, the smile of
appreciation that Italian men reserved for pretty blondes.

‘
Benvenuta in Italia, Signorina Lopez
, ’ he said.

She had done it. She was in. Through the green channel, round a corner, down a corridor, glass doors sliding open, the roar and bustle of the arrivals hall. She paused for a moment, reading the
various signs carried by the throng of men in cheap suits, surnames marker-penned on sheets of paper. She was searching for her own.

A woman pushed past her, very Italian-looking: hair piled up on top of her head, dangling gold hoop earrings, enormous bosoms that she carried in front of her like inflated airbags. Packed into
tight jeans, she was unusually tall, obscuring the view for a few moments as she sashayed down the aisle between the barriers, the high, obviously fake shelf of her breasts drawing glances from
every single man she passed. She followed slowly in the woman’s wake, her own chest drawing considerably less attention, still checking out every sign. And at last, she saw
‘LOPEZ’ on a piece of paper, and above it, a round, balding head with dark eyes behind rimless glasses. Late forties, early fifties, in a rather better-quality suit than most of the
drivers here. Tubby, but he carried himself well. And his smile was friendly.

He darted forward, pulling at the strap of her Vuitton bag, indicating he would carry it for her, but there was no way she was letting anyone else take control of that bag, with all its precious
contents. She shook her head, clinging tightly to the strap, and he danced back immediately, lifting his hands in apology.

‘Excuse me, I only try to help! Evie, yes? Miss Evie Lopez? I am Mario, Mario Piciacchi. A distant, very distant cousin of George Goldman. By marriage only, but still, a relative. He is
very important in New York, George, they tell me? Big lawyer. It’s good to have a big lawyer in the family, even if you never meet him. And now he sends me you, to look after. I am a guide,
you see.’ He puffed up his chest. ‘The best in Rome, I assure you.’

‘Hi, Mr Pi—’

Her tongue twisted over the hard, unfamiliar consonants of his surname.

‘No, no, Mario! You call me Mario!’ he insisted. ‘Is much more easy for the Americans! Always, call me Mario. Is much more easy.’

He looked at her, taking in her appearance, the dark circles under her eyes that she had tried to camouflage with Touche Eclat on the plane.

‘You are tired, it’s clear. I take you to a hotel now, so you can rest. A nice place, I make a reservation already.’

‘No, ’ she said, shaking her head. ‘I need to go here.’

She produced the piece of paper, crumpled now from the journey, handing it to Mario. And she watched in consternation as his expression changed in a split-second from benevolent to deeply
concerned.

‘No, no, ’ he said, shaking his head. ‘No, I cannot take you here. Impossible!’ He handed the paper back to her, pursing his lips and shaking his head. ‘It is a
very, very bad area where that place is. No police will go. There are guns, drugs—’

His eyes widened as something occurred to him. He darted a glance from side to side, checking out their surroundings.

‘Come, we go to the bar, ’ he said, leading the way across the arrivals hall to a wide curve of white marble. He ordered cappuccino and brioche for both of them, and carried them to
a small, breast-high marble table.

‘You don’t understand, ’ she said urgently, sipping the coffee, which was rich and loaded her up with energy. ‘There’s someone I have to talk to who lives
there.’

He rolled his eyes.

‘Look,
signorina
. I may call you
signorina,
yes? Now in Italy they say, “All ladies must be called
signora
”, if not it is
maleducato,
not polite,
because you say that maybe a lady is not married. I don’t understand, frankly, but that is what they say. But you, so young and pretty, it seems wrong to call you
signora!
You
understand?’

‘Yes. Fine. You can call me anything you want.’ She took a bite of brioche, eggy and sweet. ‘But I have to go to this address and talk to the man whose name is on that
paper.’

Mario’s distress was extreme: he tamped his brow with the flimsy paper napkin, even though the terminal was air-conditioned and cool.

‘Look,
Signorina
Evie, ’ he began, leaning across the table, lowering his voice. ‘George Goldman, he says to take very good care of you, and this I want to do. Do you
need drugs? Is that it? I myself have nothing to do with this kind of thing, but maybe I could ask. I don’t want to, please understand me.’ He wrung his hands. ‘But if you need it
– are you in,
come si dice
, a fall? Do you have pain?’

‘No! Of course not!’ she exclaimed, eyebrows rising to her hairline. Her surprise was so obvious that Mario relaxed immediately.

‘Good! Good! So why do you need to go to this terrible place?’

‘There’s someone there – this man, Giuseppe Scutellaro, but they call him Joe—’ she pointed to the name. ‘I need to talk to him. He’s told lies about
– about a friend of mine, and she’ll go to prison if he doesn’t tell the truth. I need to convince him to say what really happened.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I’m
supposed to pay him to tell the truth, ’ she explained. ‘Someone paid him to lie, and now if I pay him more—’

‘I see, I see, ’ Mario nodded quickly, appreciatively. Italy ran on bribes, Lola knew from Jean-Marc, whose family had textile factories here. It would be commonplace to give money
to a witness; from Mario’s response, she could see the truth of that.

‘He’s holed up here.’ It was her turn to point to the address. ‘Keeping quiet till he has to go back to New York to testify.’

‘So we have to go here, ’ Mario said, with deep resignation. ‘This is very bad. One of the worst
periferie
– suburbs, you would say – in the city. And
believe me, there are many bad suburbs here. This is a
quartiere povera, una topaia.
A very poor place. We say, where the mice live. Only there are no mice, because the cats eat them
all.’ He finished his coffee and furrowed his brow, deep in thought; his cup was still in his hand, suspended in mid-air. ‘My son, he knows some people who have the nightclubs. We will
take someone from the nightclubs with us. A
buttafuori
. Bouncer, I think you call it.’

Mario set down his cup and pushed it to one side. He steepled both his pudgy hands on the table, fixing her with a business-like stare.

‘Excuse me,
signorina
, but I must ask this now. To go to this place for me, perhaps to have my car broken or stolen, to take this risk and to find a
buttafuori
, to pay him,
none of this will be cheap. You say you will pay this man, this Scutellaro, much money to tell the truth. So for my expenses too, there will be enough money?’

It was no time for bargaining. Lola’s life, effectively, was on the line. She met his stare full-on, nodding in a way that convinced him she was serious. In the Vuitton bag was a small
fortune in traveller’s cheques, and she could certainly spare plenty to pay Mario Piciacchi to take her to this rathole in the worst suburb of Rome.

‘Whatever it takes, ’ she told him.

Four hours later, Mario picked her up from her hotel, a charming place in Trastevere, built around a small central garden in which a fountain played soft water from a statue of
Neptune holding his trident, and deep pink roses were starting to bloom from the bushes planted on each side of the marble paths across the square courtyard. Mario was waiting in the courtyard, his
face grim. But not as grim as that of the man standing a pace behind him and slightly to one side, his hands clasped across his chest.

‘This is Leo, ’ Mario said. ‘He will come with us.’

She nodded at Leo, and received a short nod in response. About five feet ten, with a long, bony shaved skull, his nose, in true Roman fashion, was long and hooked and looked as if its arch had
been broken a couple of times. The hands clasped over his chest were equally bony, the knuckles swollen and knobbed. Leo had been in plenty of fights. She just hoped he’d won most of
them.

‘Right, so now we go!’ Mario announced. ‘I will be positive, ’ he added rather bleakly. ‘It is important to be positive.’

They piled into a small, battered Fiat, which sagged noticeably under Mario and Leo’s weight. Mario was driving.

‘This is my mother’s car, ’ Mario informed her. ‘She had had it for fifteen years, she will not change it. Of course, mine is much better. A Mercedes. For the clients I
drive. But we do not take it to this
quartiere
. No, no, no. The animals who live there, they have never seen anything so beautiful as my Mercedes. They will destroy it at once.’ He
translated this for Leo, who nodded agreement.

Negotiating out of the centre of Rome, with its endless roadworks and architectural digs slowing traffic down to a crawl, took a while; but by the time they were on a main road leading out of
town they could have been in any poor Italian city. Endless apartment blocks made from slabs of crumbling concrete, sad little strings of washing pegged across the shabby balconies. Advertising
hoardings, tattered at the corners, as if no one had bothered to change them in years. It was hard to believe that, just a short while before, they had been in Rome itself, the Eternal City, with
its exquisite marble buildings, its narrow, enchanting streets, its moneyed, stylish occupants. They had rounded the Colosseum on their way out and she had gasped, its high colonnades so beautiful
that even Leo had nodded in approval of Lola’s reaction to one of the wonders of the world.

And now the landscape was going from bad to worse. The graffiti on the stone was becoming thicker and more frequent, the apartment blocks in a worse and worse state of decay. Kids lounged on
corners, staring at every car that passed in challenge, or piled onto battered bicycles, one riding, one standing behind with his hands on the rider’s shoulders, one sitting behind him, legs
out wide, maybe even a fourth perching on the front mudguard. Refuse of all kinds littered the streets. And everywhere, there were the cats. Skinny, feral cats, slipping along crumbling walls,
darting across the streets, rummaging through overflowing bins down dark alleyways.

Finally, the car braked with a squeal, backed up, shot right down a narrow street, and halted with a groan of its entire engine.

‘We are here, ’ Mario announced unhappily.

They climbed out and surveyed the territory. On either side of them rose the concrete apartment blocks they had seen from the main road, ten storeys high, built in the 1970s and aging very
badly. Dark water stains marked almost every join of the concrete, which was visibly crumbling and filthy; bird shit and graffiti were struggling for dominance, and it was hard to tell which was
winning. It was a hot late-spring day, which only made the smells even stronger. Big steel dumpsters of rubbish were overflowing everywhere, reeking, and a cat fight was in progress in a bin behind
them – high, unearthly screams and hisses.

But the worst smell was of drains. The lower note was the musty, unhealthy odour of damp, but above that, richer and more powerful, was the stink of faeces and urine. It was as if this entire
area had been built on an open sewer. Lola did her best not to gag.

Mario was locking the car, squaring his shoulders as if about to go into battle. Leo was looking around him, and in turn they were being surveyed by many pairs of eyes. Men leaning on the stone
walkways that ran around each storey of the apartment blocks. Kids, scruffing around the pavement, kicking battered old balls, seemingly aimless, but their dark eyes sharp and alert. A group of
young men, smoking unfiltered Camels, clustered around the dented steel entrance door to the apartment block where Joe Scutellaro lived, their hard stares directed straight at Mario, Leo and
herself.